Cantonese, also widely known as Yue Yu (粤语) or Guangdong Hua (广东话) in a much broader sense, is in fact one of the many varieties of the Yue Family of Chinese dialects. From the linguistic and historical linguistic point of view, it is generally viewed as the lingua fanca of this family. The variety being discussed in this book is the one spoken in the City of Guangzhou (广州), the capital of Guangdong province, therefore it is known as Guangzhou Hua (Guangzhou speech), or rather, Guangzhou Cantonese as suggested by the title of this book.

This book is based on the author's Master's thesis completed at the University of Texas with updated information and language data. A sociolinguistic as well as historical linguistic account of this language is given in some detail, including a special section on the Creo-natured origin of Cantonese and its close varieties. Discussions in great detail have been given to the segmental and suprasegmental features of this language. The complex yet symmetrical tone system and the unique tone sandhi phenomena are treated with feature geometry framework. The major motivation for the tone change has been investigated. For the first time, presumably, some significant synchronic changes undertaken by modern Guangzhou Cantonese in the past fifty years have been probed.

The author Ming Chao Gui, also the author of two other books on Chinese dialects: Yunnanese and Kunming Chinese, published by LINCOM EUROPA in 2000 and 2001 respectively, is Associate Professor of Chinese and Linguistics at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics of the University of Oklahoma, Norman campus, U.S.A. He lived and worked in Guangzhou from 1953 to 1983 and married a native Cantonese. In the past two decades, he has regular publications on Chinese dialects, Chinese language teaching methodology, and comparative studies of Chinese and English phonetics, phonology, and translation in China, the U.S. and abroad.